CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

Just Say No

Today, the US House of Representatives voted against the proposed government bailout of US financial institutions.  Good.  We have a mostly free marketplace, and the less government intervention the better.  Yes, the government should set the rules, and perhaps even adjust them every great once in a while.  What the government should NOT be doing is constantly tweaking the rules and then bailing out the losers simply because they happen to be large.

Having the government artifically control the marketplace is…well…communism.  And we all know how well that has worked, historically.  It’s easy to understand why the government feels the need to do something – if they don’t, and the natural market corrections occur, many people will feel a lot of pain.  And most of those people will also be voters, and injured

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Hey, now we have the bones for a bar -- no more wall!!

So check this out!  We have a headerboard that goes across the span, and the makings of a half-wall / bar in our new footprint!  How great is that?!I didn’t really get to help as much as I wanted — what with the vapors, I was pretty miserable and Engineerboy was really worried.  I did eventually feel well enough to help, so I was doing light work like drilling holes and putting screws in but Scott was watching me like a hawk in case I decided to keel over.  It was like This Old House meets House!!! 
Anyway, I’m quite proud of our (Engineerboy’s) job, the headerboard is absolutely level,

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So Project Wall Remove proceeds.  It’s funny that we moved out of the Houston Heights into Brenham, only to be embarking on a quintessentially Heights-ian project of remodeling our 2/1 tiny bungalow on an undersized lot. 

The rerouted wiring behind the kitchen wall.

Today was spent with rerouting wiring (Engineerboy), cutting through wall (Engineerboy), and removing about 1 zillion nails (Mynagirl).  Oh and shop-vac’ing the hell outta the inside of what-used-to-be-a-wall.  (Including spider eggs, yuck!!) 

We learned that the kitchen floor is higher than the dining room floor because the kitchen has 3-count-them-3 layers of linoleum layed down on top of one another.  And there’s plywood underneath the 3 layers of linoleum on top of the subfloor in the kitchen.  I don’t know why, because it’s the same subfloor as in the rest of the

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Our sweet little cottage

One of the funny things about buying a “starter” home or a “fixerupper” is that it’s hard to get started. 
 
I can go with the flow in a lot of areas and be perfectly happy with temporary fixes, but when it comes to things that are permanent I don’t like to just make a hasty decision.  Nor do I like to make a cheap one.  Permanent things are worth a little money to get the thing that makes one’s soul smile a little.  Especially when it’s something as integral to your everyday life as your home. 
 
But it leaves me a bit poleaxed.  I mean, if the wall is crappy thrice-painted paneling with plastic trim, do I really want to slap another coat of paint on it just for

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